The iPad Mini is a Dud – It’s Still in Stock at Best Buy, Walmart

Do you know how Apple is showing a 2 week delay for the iPad Mini on their website? It looks like Apple might be the only one having supply issues; if my local retail stores are any sign then iPad Mini is facing a serious demand issue.

I have just returned from making the rounds of my local electronics stores, and while I would not say that they have an excess of stock, both my local Best Buy and my local Walmart had iPad Minis to sell.

That's not good news for Apple.

When the iPad Mini was revealed to the world, I and many other bloggers poo-pooed it due to the disappointing screen resolution, ridiculous price, and the general inanity of the presentation.

And now it seems that the public agrees. For the first time that I can recall, Apple didn't sell out of their latest and greatest flagship product. It's a Saturday night, the day after launch, and both local stores have the iPad Mini in hand.

Neither store had the 16GB model but they both could sell me the 32GB model. It cost $429, a ridiculous sum considering that I could have bought an iPad 2, which had identical specs and a larger screen, for only $349.

And it is exactly that kind of comparison which has doomed the iPad Mini. The buying public isn't stupid; they can see when the price is ridiculous and they'll get something else.

Apple is going to have to drop the price of the iPad Mini, otherwise its sales will be embarrassing. Mark my words, there will be a price cut by the Spring.

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Nate Hoffelder

Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader: He's here to chew bubble gum and fix broken websites, and he is all out of bubble gum. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills at the drop of a hat. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns on The Digital Reader's blog. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.

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73 Comments

jimmysuggs3 November, 2012

Wow, are we really holding up Apple’s past sales as the standard for all current and future sales? Because that seems a little ridiculous. By that standard, any time a product doesn’t completely sell out instantly, it’s “not good news” for Apple. That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?

Regardless, sold out or not- they probably sold a ton of ipad minis already and are gonna go on to sell a ton more. In fact, I’d venture that every other tablet maker would kill for the “low” sales numbers that the ipad mini has produced since it went on sale.

I think it’s a bit soon for these absolute pronouncements of gloom and doom. It tips your hand and shows a loss of objectivity. I understand you’re not a journalist and don’t need total objectivity (this is after all, your site) but this post really smacks of unnecessary bias against Apple. Now they’re doomed because they haven’t sold every single ipad mini on the planet? Isn’t that taking things a bit too far, a bit too quickly?

Also I’d say it’s highly unlikely they’ll cut the price for the mini. Why would they? They’re likely selling a ton (sold out or not) and it’s not like they’re going to file for bankruptcy if they have any left over at the end of the fiscal year. Plain and simple- Apple’s not desperate. They don’t do the chasing, they wait to be chased. The fact that there are a few less people chasing this time around really means nothing.

Good point. Apple is the only company where a launch is regarded as a failure unless every store all over the world is sold out of the product the first day it goes on sale. (Given that it almost always happens, it is understandable but still…) However, it does seem that the mini is not selling as well as previous Apple products, even though any other company would probably be delighted with the sales figures.

Except you’ll never be able to prove it as Amazon doesn’t release any numbers to how many Kindles they sell. I think its a bit of a misnomer to say its a failure when the 32Gb is in stock and the 16Gb is not. The real change that has happened in the last 5 years is that people realize that if its out of stock today, it will be in stock shortly (instead of having to wait weeks like you used to). Hence there’s no need to say, “well I’ll get the 32Gb even though I wanted the 16” because next week the 16 Gb will be in stock, simply because Apple is making a ton of them.

Personally I’m waiting to see how good the screen is for reading, and if it isn’t, I’ll buy a Nook HD in the short term until the screen is upgraded.

Your an idiot… it is sold out everywhere but Sprint, or the 64G version! Yeah Dud. OK. What got me is that I would rather pay $29 more and get the iPad mini than $299 for the iPod touch… so that is exactly what I am doing. Hardly thinks it is a “dud”. Seriously. You don’t paid for writing this inaccurate crap do you?

I suppose it’s not too surprising that Apple priced this so high, they’ve always felt that their software justified an 80 percent markup. If it weren’t for them selling previous iPads so much lower, no one would blink an eye.

There are also other bloggers that think the iPad Mini is the greatest thing since sliced bread too.

I agree with Jimmy that this doesn’t mean that Apple has anything to worry about.

On the other hand and being far more realistic….

In the 7inch tablet market, there is much more competition than Apple is use to at a launch of a new product. The Google Nexus and Kindle Fire HD have been out for awhile and people buying those for the first time aren’t going to run off and buy an IPad Mini that costs $130 right away.

Also Apple just released their new IPhone 5 which also can siphon sales from the Mini because their loyal customers just ran out and bought new phones and may not have the extra money to buy the mini.

I do think that after this holiday season, the iPad Mini is just going to sit on shelves and no one is going to buy it.

I was at my local Best Buy Mobile and saw the iPad Mini last night. After about a 30 minute comparison (no one else was waiting in line to look at it), I can report that the iPad Mini has the WORST screen resolution of any major tablet on the market today. Even the first generation Kindle Fire, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Nook Tablet did a noticeably better job of displaying text than the iPad Mini. Fonts look thin, grey, and fuzzy on the Mini. I thought I might have been mistakenly using an IdolPad display in a Mini casing. The new Kindle Fire HD looked ten times better. The most shocking difference came when I held up my iPhone 4s to the Mini with the same text displayed on each device. It was a huge plunge in resolution and text clarity. I don’t know how, after months of using the iPad 3’s retina display, people are going to get used to the grainy Mini display and actually enjoy it. The poor screen resolution, high price, and deceptively oversold features easily make this the worst tablet of 2012.

Thank you, Isles and Nate. This is exactly the kind of reportage I like; real world experience. Propaganda isn’t useful regardless from where it comes. I wish the other bloggers and tech sites did this too.

You have point there with the resolution. But for some people this will be the first iPad, they won’t notice it. Also I was in an Apple Shop (one of the smaller ones: AEZ, Hamburg, Germany ) and had the iPad mini in hand. I own an iPad (3) which was my first iPad and use it, but have trouble holding it for a longer period of time, it is just to heavy. I like the size and weight of the iPad mini, but cannot afford to buy one now. Maybe with the next generation or a price drop. The display is no show-stopper for me, but it is noticeable.

Isles, with all due respect, I don’t the average consumer gives nearly as much of a crap about resolution as you do. I can’t see most people holding up devices to see which one is the “fuzziest” oh being terribly shocked by screen resolution, blah blah blah. I’ve been using the ipad mini for a day now and the display seems just fine. I’m not gonna hold my 4S up to it to compare pixels cuz I’d feel kinda dumb doing that. All I know is, the display on the mini is great and stuff looks just fine to me. And I’m fairly tech savvy, which tells me that the average consumer really won’t give a crap about the display, let alone start comparing it to other devices to see which one is better, etc. People aren’t buying ipad minis for the pixel count, they’re buying them for the overall experience. And people buying kindles also aren’t buying them for the pixel count- they’re buying them because they’re less expensive. Screen resolution just isn’t as much of a factor to people in the real world. As far as I can tell anyhow.

Look, I don’t wanna knock kindles or nooks or what not. I’ve had a nook tablet for the last year and it’s a great device, I really enjoy it. I wanted an ipad but until now they were too damn big and heavy to suit my purposes. When the mini was announced it was a no brainer for me, because now I can get the very elegant, very enjoyable “i” experience in a smaller form. For me, it’s just a nice way to tablet. I love the nook, but let’s face it, elegant, it is not. Same goes for the kindle, which is really just a delivery system for content. So is the nook really, but at least they’re kind enough to offer an SD card slot. And frankly so is the ipad, but at least they offer versions with tons of space for your own content.

Bottom line: I don’t get the apple hate. It seems like people want them to fail. Besides the fact that it’s never gonna happen, it seems pointless. They make a product people want and I don’t see why that’s bad.

I get your point Jimmy. The iPad mini is not the best thing since sliced bread, but it is a fully functional iPad in a smaller size and half the weight. Compared to the Kindle Fire and the Nook it is also the only computational device, since those other two are just media appliances. Simply put, the iPad mini will sell extremely well and will not need a price reduction. Those who critizise the mini’s price contradict themselves when talking about the Nook, the Kindle or the Nexus. If price is what matters, then the Playbook would be the successful one in this market.

I don’t know what it is about Apple that just drives some people crazy. Some bloggers love the brand to death and others hate it in equal measure and foresee doom at every turn. For me it is just a company that sells very high-quality hardware that no other company can equal and then sell at the same price and that is usable almost everywhere in the world. I live in South America. Believe me, Kindle fires do not exist here, and if they did, they would be useless. In the meantime, I will be happy getting an iPad mini, it is better than the iPad 2 and not only its apps are unmatched yet, but its iOS will still be supported for at least a couple of years, which cannot be said of ANY competitor on the market. All the while, people will keep whining and complaining about Apple and the products they would love if they could afford to buy.

I understand your perspective Jimmy. The iPad Mini is a fully-functional iPad in every other way, but I am speaking to a large number of consumers who insist on high-definition displays because about 70% of what we do on a tablet involves eReading. When it comes to reading text, compared to all of the newer and older 7″ tablets on the market today (even the 10″), the iPad Mini has the worst display of any device. Do a simple comparison. The new Kindle Fire HD and Nook HD just crush the iPad Mini in resolution quality, but it isn’t I who set the standards for this, Apple did it when they focused on making ‘retina display’ a household word associated with Apple. Then insisted on a higher quality display, and then abandoned that notion for the Mini.

I am not an Apple Hater. I happen to love Apple. I bought my first iPod in 2001. I have owned four iPods, iPads 1, 2, and 3, a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 4S (my wife has an iPhone 5), and I will be upgrading to a MacBook Pro Retina 15″ this Christmas. I love iOS. I love iTunes. I was never rooting for Apple to fail, but I didn’t expect them to scoff at industry standards for displays that they helped to create. I also didn’t expect them to lie to consumers by repeatedly stating that the iPad Mini “is not just a shrunken-down iPad 2,” when that is exactly what it is.

The fact is, when comparing the Mini side-by-side with competing Android tablets (including even the 2001 Kindle Fire first gen), the iPad Mini has the worst display of them all. And when you compare it to Apple’s other devices, it just looks awful. As a person who mainly uses tablets to read and browse the web, I feel that this plunge in display quality is unacceptable, and that the decision was most likely motivated by greed (they want to keep iPad 4 sales flowing, and not cross into the ultra expensive iPod Touch territory).

From all my friends considering to buy an iPad Mini not one is buying the wifi version. The mini is a tablet that fits in almost all my jacket pocket, so the 4G version is the way to go here. I guess there will be lots of iPad Minis used in trains and cafes starting december.

I see your point about the 4G, but the price difference is too much of a barrier. It’s £100 here. For that I’d probably just carry on using my Mifi. The difference for the 32GB Nexus 7 is only £40, though that’s only 3G.

I went looking for Minis on Friday, the launch day. They weren’t as easy to find as I might have expected – don’t know whether they’d blown through stock, sold them all as preorders, or just sold out. We don’t have an Apple store here, but there’s an affiliate and I got to play on one there. Apparently Apple had instructed them to only display black ones. I also found one demo machine at John Lewis. No sign of it at PC World. The general theme seemed to be that the white ones had sold out quickly and the 16GB were pretty much gone. The affiliate had gone through multiple deliveries.

So not exactly a story of poor sales. Though I did get the impression that maybe they hadn’t received enough stock. I want to look at a white one too; maybe in London tomorrow.

I think Nate’s having too much of a down on Apple. On the other hand, I was primed to buy one and the real thing didn’t close the sale. The display did put me off, because I’ve been spoiled by my iPod Touch, and I was mindful of the price. If either of those had been better I might well have taken the plunge, but now I’m having a big ponder.

I think the core market for this is people who’ve been interested in the iPad and never quite talked themselves into it. The lowest price for an iPad so far will tip them over the edge.

Tyler, I think we can safely assume that the audience for something like the paperwhite is not the same audience for for tablets with color screens. People who seek out the paperwhite or the nook glow or similar devices are doing so for dedicated reading, they’re not looking to watch movies or play games or take pictures, etc. This being the case, I can see how those folks might be more savvy about screens. And I’m glad it’s sold out, because that means there’s a lot of people reading out there and the paperwhite looks like a great device.

But the audience for the paperwhite and color tablets is just not the same. And I really don’t think the people in the market for color tablets give a crap about screen resolution the way the paperwhite folks do. Just my opinion, anyhow. The tablet folks seem to be seeking either the highest quality or the lowest price.

And Daniel, I too wish I could understand what makes people so nuts about Apple. What I really dislike is how people who hate Apple accuse people who use Apple products of being mindless sheep who will buy anything they produce, etc. Speaking for myself anyhow, this is not the case. I didn’t buy an ipad because they were too heavy. I don’t own a mac because I don’t wanna pay 2 grand for tech that’ll be outdated in 6 months. But I got an iphone because it seemed to be the best phone on the market that could do the most things I want to do. I think Apple does some things well and those are the things I purchase. I don’t mindlessly hand my money over for anything with an apple logo on it and while I’m certain that there are some folks who, I don’t think those people make up the mainstay of the consumer audience. I think because people see those kinda folks waiting in line in front of Apple stores on the news, they assume that anyone who uses any Apple products must be equally as zealous. Not so the case, I think. And I’m guessing most consumers are nothing like the people waiting in line in front of Apple stores. They’re just the ones who get the most attention- therefore they’re the easiest targets.

I was pointing out the fallacy of your argument that people do not care about the screen resolution but they do. Otherwise screens would not improve. They have for the Nook Tablet HDs, the Kindle Fire HDs, Google Nexus came out with a sharp display. It’s odd that Apple would go back in the opposite direction.

Go to Best Buy and compare books on the Kindle Fire HD to the Nook Tablet and see what a difference a better screen does for reading. There is a big difference.

I have the Nook Tablet which is one of my primary readers. I like it just for reading but I don’t buy apps for it since I can’t use them for anything else but the Nooks. I plan to get the new Nexus 7 32 gig when it comes out. Why? Cause I changed phones this year from the iPhone to the Galaxy Note.

So this comes to the part of why I would expect people to buy the iPad Mini despite it’s high price and flaws. iPhone apps will run on them. So all the apps on your phone should run perfectly fine when you buy the Mini. I know Apple just wanted to not have developers having to make for a third platform specifically.

I have no problems seeing people standing in front of stores on launch day. I don’t think they are mindless Zealots. We all have things we like and covet. Look at the release of Halo 4 this week and how many people will be waiting for the midnight launch. Wait until Black Friday and see all the people that wait before stores open. I saw the Avengers at the midnight showing after watching the five movies leading up to it at the movie theater. Event stuff is fun for people.

I’m not an Apple person, though I have nothing against the company or its products. But yes, that comparison of prices makes the issue clear as crystal. If you get a bigger screen for less, why get the expensive one? Apple’s competing against its own products, which is never good.

What is missing in the discussion here are the reasons to use or not use a certain tablet: mainly the Apps and the usability. In this regard the iPad mini may be the best small tablet. But truth be told, I have no real Android Device (a rooted Sony PRS-T1), so I would like to read or hear what others have to say with a Nexus 7 or something like it. Maybe someone can chime in with a comparison, as that has so far not been covered aside from a few bloggers snide comments – being that Android-Apps are mainly designed for Phones and look bad on tablets.

Yes, but the average iPad 3 user knows how awesome his/her current display looks, and once they pick up their Mini, they will be disappointed if they do a lot of reading. You can’t deny that their is a major difference.

Plus this is not the eighties. People know what pixels are and can spot the difference in resolutions even if they do not know the exact pixel count and what it correlates too. Of course, Apple people may not know what it means or they would not have invented the term Retina display….ha ha!

I think a lot of people are over looking just how expensive that retina display is to make. Once sharp gets its new LCD technology up and running in quantities (which is what Apple was originally looking for, for the iPad mini), we’ll see a retina display put in.

Foxcomm just bought a huge stake in their display side, so I think that part is safe…..

fjtorres5 November, 2012

LCD panel makers seem to be going the way of DRAM in the 90’s. Too much capacity and nobody is willing to cut back production so nobody makes money. That ended in consolidation to maybe three big vendors. Samsung and LG are both looking to sell off some of their plants but they’ve found no buyers. Foxconn buying up Sharp factories means the bleeding will continue for the rest.

jimmysuggs4 November, 2012

Actually I don’t understand the argument that android apps are just for phones and not for tablets, etc. Maybe they’re not specifically made for tablets, but the apps I ran on my nook tablet looked just fine. They weren’t blown out or fuzzy or scaled up, they looked very normal and crisp and all played well. So I really don’t get the notion that somehow apps for android aren’t as good as app for ios, because to me they seemed just as good. Maybe they weren’t super duper HD or whatever, but to my eye they looked really nice.

My only problem with android apps is that there aren’t enough of them and a lot of the really good ios apps and games aren’t available on android. I found that to be frustrating. But the ones that ARE available for Android ran really well on my nook, regardless of what size device they were made for.

The Nook App Store does not have the same amount of apps as the Google Play Store. Google Play has just as many apps as the iTunes store. All of the major games are duplicated for both platforms. The Nook store is very weak.

The Nook Store and now Nook Video are horrible. The Nook store has about 4,000 apps available while the Google Play Store has 450,000.

Nook Video is absolutely dreadful at this point. They are missing almost every current major TV show you can think of and their movie selection is something straight out of the $5 discard bin at Walmart . . .

Whoops, I should have mentioned that my Nook was rooted so I had full access to the google store and amazon, etc.

And while all the major games (or most of them anyhow) are duplicated, there are a ton of really awesome smaller games that are not. Stuff like The Creeps, Puzzle Agent, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. Really interesting, really unique games that aren’t on Google or Amazon or anywhere but ios. Google does have some unique apps of its own, but not nearly as many as ios. And while a few of those unique ios apps are also on google- most are not and probably never will be. And for my money, that’s what gives ios an edge over google.

I own, or have owned, most of the tablets and e-readers being discussed here (except the Nook line). None are perfect. On paper, most tablets are better than the Mini. In most situations, however, I’ll take the Mini. Yes, the resolution of my ex-Kindle Fire HD and iPad 3 are better, and the Paperwhite is the best e-reader only device. But the Kindle Fire HD’s software is abominable (more like alpha than beta, especially the browser) and the iPad 3 is beautiful but bulky. After using the Mini for the better part of two days, I am amazed at what Apple has accomplished. I actually think it is close to the perfect portable computing device. It’s fantastic for reading (which I do a lot of and I’m VERY picky about my reading device), great for video and also a decent gaming device. It feels wonderful to hold–amazingly thin and very well-balanced. It’s a joy to use.

I expect demand for the iPad mini to grow over time, as opposed to peaking on intro-weekend like most Apple products nowadays. It needs to be experienced IRL to fully appreciate it.

One more thought about resolution. I spend most of my day looking at a 19″ 1280 x 1024 LCD screen (work PC). I think the dpi on that is about 120 (although my math might be wrong). Since fonts are smaller on a portable device (to display the same amount of info as larger devices), I get why dpi might matter more on a tablet. But as someone with presyopia, I usually zoom in to make the text bigger anyway, whether I’m using my HTC One-X or my iPad3. To a point, bigger is better for those of us who are nearsighted, making dpi almost irrelevant.

Oh the horror…… Apple will be increasing burdened by the profits generated by the two fold increase.

In bizarro world, the above characterization would be correct. But that’s where almost completely sold out iPads are a “dud” below too. Sure the most expensive variants were still around but the demand completely outstripping the supply status of the entry (and in many locations mid-level ) model completely negates the “dud”/”failed”/”flawed” market acceptance of the product.

The top range iPad mini probably does need a tweak to the production run rate but for every top mini reduced Apple could increase the entry level supply. For example, instead of a product mix of

16GB 50% , 32GB 30% , 64GB 20%

They could shift production over the next 6-12 weeks to:

16GB 70% , 32GB 20% , 64GB 10%

or to whatever the customer demand percentages to turn out to be. They will have to wait until after the 3GB models ship to get the best steady state mix but that can easily be done by Spring. Given the channel inventory on these models is likely very short (e.g., right now zero days for some models), it isn’t going to be hard to flush the less calibrated mix out of he system over the next 3 months.

There is zero problem with the 64GB model selling at much lower rate than the 16GB mini or 16GB iPad 4th generation. The only problem would be making more than there is demand for. If the demand == supply there is *zero* rational reason to cut the price.

You can wait till Spring, but the far more likely event is that the iPad 2 is gone from the Apple store by Spring. So the argument of the iPad 2 imploding the mini’s price at that point would also evaporate. [ There are many organizations that have iPad 2 purchase orders in flight and this update is off the more predictable 12 month cycle Apple follows. However, by the next iPad 2 anniversary date, there would be very few counting on the iPad 2 being available from Apple. ]

Apple will probably not let go of iPads crossing the $300 threshold. Most likely they have assigned the “below $300″ prize zone to be primary zone for the 4” iPod Touch. As long as the $299 Touch is there moving an almost 2x sized tablet to match or underneath creates the same “dud” marketing approach you’re bemoaning here. Apple is unlikely to throw the Touch ‘under the bus’ just to “match prices” with 7″ tablets they aren’t directly competing with anyway.

Apple(R) today announced it has sold three million iPads in just three days since the launch of its new iPad(R) mini and fourth generation iPad–double the previous first weekend milestone of 1.5 million Wi-Fi only models sold for the third generation iPad in March.

And March’s says….

March 19, 2012?Apple® today announced it has sold three million of its incredible new iPad®, since its launch on Friday, March 16.

That’s half as much as they claimed in March. It says in March that the 3Gs weren’t available yet.

Again, the ridiculous standard apple is held to is really quite baffling.

They must sell 3 million of EVERY MODEL in order to qualify as a success? Doesn’t seem too rational to me. In the eyes of some people (people who seem to hate the company) Apple is only a success if they sell every single model they have in stock and have a 3 month wait for new ones, etc. These are standards that NO other company would be held to. And the fact that this past weekend, Apple probably sold more ipads than Amazon sells Kindles in one quarter, doesn’t seem to much to Apple’s steadfast detractors.

I totally respect people standing behind their favorite products, be they ipads, kindles, nooks, what have you. What I don’t get is this mentality where you hope for competitor’s products to fail. Some people who dislike Apple are gleefully rubbing their hands together, hoping that this tiny chink in the armor is the first step towards bankruptcy for Apple, etc. When in fact Apple’s failures (which the ipad mini is a LONG way from being) are generally more profitable than other people’s successes.

Again, it all comes down to choice, but I really don’t understand this hatred for Apple. You don’t like them, don’t buy their stuff. But there’s no need to hope they fail the way some people clearly do.

Why not just enjoy what you have and not worry about product that you feel are too expensive? It’s one thing to discuss price and marketing and industry and what not, but the post that started all this was simple a gleeful exhalation of Apple’s apparent failure. Besides the fact that the mini isn’t actually a failure at all- that sort of diatribe seems petty and pointless.

On the other hand it’s kept people commenting on this post for several days now, which brings a lot of eyes to the Amazon and Nexus banner ads that are plastered all over this site.

Did any of you hear of this thing called Superstorm Sandy, for chrissakes? It happened out there in that thing called The Real World.

Given how many people were affected, I think most people Out There had connections to the victims and were busy trying to figure out how to help, not line up at a goddammed store for a gadget that can be had any damn time.

IIRC, Apple has five Apple Stores in the NYC metro area: 4 in Manhattan, 1 on Staten Island. Out of those five, only *two* were open on Friday. Gee, you think shit like that might also account for sales too? FFS!

Of course I heard of Sandy. I read on your blog where you thought business should not stop in NYC and it was dumb that they closed down mass transit since the storm would most likely go out to sea. Shows how smart you are Mike. So stop preaching.

NYC is shutting down mass transit this evening. Screwing everybody who requires it to make their living. Are one-percenters Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg going to take money out of their own pockets to reimburse people for that loss of income? Don’t make me laugh.

At some point, there will be a class-action lawsuit against the tyranny of this software-based “leadership.”

If you’re going to fuck-up people’s lives like this, you should be held accountable.

It can’t happen too soon.

— A few days later you go on to blast those people for not doing enough..

I’m glad that someone else has realized that the iPad mini is a rather sad and pathetic grab at money.

Let’s compare it to a Nexus 7: Nexus 7 = $129 less Nexus 7 = better resolution Nexus 7 = more RAM Nexus 7 = better processor Nexus 7 = better ergonomics (this one is debatable, and a matter of opinion, I understand. However, try using each one in one hand and you tell me which is easier to use.)

I could go on. You get the idea. The iPad 4 is a decent chunk of hardware (though nothing at all revolutionary and still overpriced), but the iPad mini is just a bunch of execs saying, “Hey, we need a smaller tablet and we don’t want to spend money developing it. Can we just cram iPad 2 junk inside and sell it as magical?” 🙂

Whereas Amazon, Google and Barnes and Noble are all non profit organizations with no interest in financial gain and who donate whatever meager income they do make to charities, keeping none for themselves.

Again I must point out, it’s not enough for the product you love to be good- every competing product must also be bad. As long as Apple sells one more unit than their competition (let alone millions) there will always be people there to explain why it should never have happened.

The ipad mini was arguably named the best tablet when it came out in November 2012. It was a sleek sexy device with complete functionality. Is the price to much probably… But we live in America people everything is expensive… The mcdouble is no longer a dollar and gasoline well don’t even get me starte. The ipad mini was a game changer and was/is a great tablet. Now we have the great retina ipad mini and the newer ipad air. The Ipad mini may not stack up against the new apple line tablets but it is the reason why we have those tablets today. No one can keep up with technology. I plan on hanging on to my mini and then replacing it when the 3rd generation mini comes out. Having the latest and greatest can’t come every year. My suggestion for those that have an ipad 2 or newer model hold onto it. Those that need a new tablet get the new ipad air or mini retina display. Remember with in a year the ipad air/ mini retina will be old.